So many thoughts rush into my mind when it tries to figure out what languages are, and why on earth You ever made them. But one thing is certain. One thing I know for certain. Languages are beautiful, just as You are beautiful beyond beauty itself, and that is why we must learn to teach them as beautifully (i.e. with as much artfulness and love and respect for our students) as we can. Because they are divine in nature.
But, back to the point of this conversation with You, teaching some of the kids of today is not a beautiful experience. It is a kind of insane thing to try to do. And now this COVID thing is hard and confusing and kind of scary, to tell You the truth, Ye who are the Truth and who already knows everything I am thinking and feeling about teaching languages, but it helps to write out here anyway.
Comprehensible input has been a pain, I gotta say. Ain’t gonna lie. What even is it? Can it even work in an online setting? That is what I want to know. Can it work in the age of COVID? What are we supposed to do?
Even in our classrooms, it’s been a kind of gnarly game of tug-of-war between us and our kids and our colleagues and the kids’ parents and a whole bunch of people who, very frustratingly to us, don’t know what we know about those beads around Your neck.
And now, we are supposed to try to reflect the brightness and beauty of those beads, those bright and amazing languages, through a computer? That’s like asking a robot to dance and sing Begin the Beguine!
But we will try. We will continue to try. We will learn things about CI and share them with each other, because we must, because of the kids.
Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-b4M8jssX8
(à suivre)